Landscape near Amsterdam

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Hubert Roestenburg, Expressionism, a force of nature

Right from the start of the German Expressionist movement, it’s artists broke free from the confinement of their studios to explore nature. Some artists saw the city as a place of apocalyptic doom and escaped to the countryside in search of some form of Utopia. “We painter folk set out early every morning heavily laden with our gear, the models trailing behind with pockets full of eatables and drinkables. We lived in absolute harmony, working and bathing.” (Max Pechstein)

Not so for Hubert Roestenburg. An expressionist in the truest sense of the word, he engages with the landscape in an intensely emotional way, sometimes lyrical, like like a dancer, completely in tune with the melody playing in his head. Sometimes the landscape provides a melody more akin to a Beethoven symphony, then, like here (landscape Near Amsterdam) we see a madman at work, a palette wielding manic who can’t get to the point fast enough.

Like for Kandinsky, and the artists of the Blaue Reiter

Hubert Roestenburg’s landscapes evolved toward abstraction. They are not a literal depictions of nature, they are scenes with only hints of familiar objects, such as: mountains, trees and the occasional house. This familiarity both anchors and confuses sometimes, what it does not do is, let go. The viewer whether he wants it or not, get pulled in to become part of its creation.

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